Many food and pharmaceutical products and others are packaged in containers with screw-on caps having an adhesively attached tamper evident membrane over the opening. The seals may be aluminum foil, cardboard, or plastic membranes. Some seals have integral removal tabs which may be difficult to grasp especially by arthritis afflicted senior citizens. In any case, after the cap is initially unscrewed, the membrane must next be removed before the product can be used.
Often, consumers must resort to the use of improvised tools at hand such as knives, screwdrivers, or scissors to penetrate the membrane and either cut it or create a hole in it so that it can be torn and removed by hand. This creates an inconvenient and dangerous situation. Clearly, a safe convenient means for penetrating the membrane should be attached to or part of the screw cap.
The prior art reveals two US patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,616,090 and 8,844,406) of Joseph Ferraro entitled Bottle Seal Breaker, which show four embodiments of membrane seal breakers which are part of the bottle caps. The present invention (also of Applicant Joseph Ferraro) is yet another embodiment which is an improvement over the prior art.
The first embodiment of the cited patents (U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,616,090 and 8,844,406 of Ferraro) illustrated in FIGS. 1-3 of Ferraro '090 and '406 has a straight notch on the bottom edge of the cap forming a short outer segment used for penetrating the membrane. While easy to manufacture and safe, it requires a bottle cap with enough bottom extension beyond the start of the threads to provide a notch deep enough for penetration without interfering with smooth thread operation.
The second embodiment of the cited patents (FIGS. 4 and 5 of Ferraro '090 and '406) shows a curved slot near the top surface of the cap on the side that is used for membrane penetration. Two aspects which add cost to the cap of this embodiment are the use of a more complex mold with a movable feature to form the side slot and the need for extra material thickness on the side of the cap to provide the required slot depth.
The third and fourth embodiments of the cited patents (FIGS. 6 and 7 of Ferraro '090 and '406) use pointed cap extensions to form membrane penetrating elements. The material of the extensions is a slight extra cost enhancer, while the pointed extensions are a hazard that may cause scratches in use.
The present invention overcomes all of these shortcomings.